Blessed is the man who always fears the LORD, but he who hardens his heart falls into trouble. (Proverbs 28:14)

When our heart closes, we often fall into trouble. There are hundreds of ways to offend your teen and close her heart, but we consistently see several that top the list. One was illustrated by a man named Chip who told us at our seminar about the lasting effects of a sarcastic comment made years before by his dad. When Chip was a teenager, a friend came over to his house one day, and Chip's father answered the door. This friend had not seen Chip's dad for several months, and the dad took one look at the boy and uttered in a bad attempt at humor, "You've grown so much! I didn't realize they stacked crap that high!"

The father's cutting remark left the young visitor hurt and embarrassed. As a result of that and similar comments, Chip's friend stopped coming over to his house. And Chip still remembered the deep hurt and pain from the experience.

Besides the making of sarcastic jokes or comments, here are the top five categories of teenage "heart closers":

1. Don't let them think on their own.

• "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
• "Try saying that at school and they'll laugh you out of the class."
• "You're too young to understand."
• "Who asked you?"
• "Please don't interrupt. Can't you see I'm trying to solve this problem?"

2. Inhibit their freedom to speak their mind.

• "That's enough talking. Go play and let us be alone for a while!"
• "No, I don't have time to listen to your drivel."
• "Is there an end to this?"
• "What you say is always so confusing!"

3. Regard their feelings as unimportant.

• "Son, you've got to get over those little things. Grow up!"
• "Come on, that's just the way your brother is. Stop taking everything so personally."
• "That shouldn't hurt your feelings. Why, when I was your age I got twice as much teasing as you get."
• "If you're going to get upset every time we go over there, I'm just not going to take you again."
• "Movies like that are just make-believe. Grow up! There's nothing to be afraid of."

4. Avoid spending time with them.

• "I've got only two days to finish this report, so no, I can't go see your play."
• "Do you think money grows on trees? I've got to work."
• "See if your mother will take you. I don't have time for this."

5. Disrespect their individuality.

• "I said, don't lock the bathroom. I may need in there to comb my hair."
• "I'm your father. I know what's best for you."
• "I don't care how many of your friends are going. You're not, and I don't want to know your reasons."
• "Don't be silly. They'll like your hairstyle."

Other parental actions likely to close a teen's heart include the following:

• Speaking harsh words
• Telling your son that his opinions don't matter
• Being unwilling to admit mistakes
• Taking your daughter for granted
• Not trusting your son
• Forcing your teen to do something with which he's uncomfortable
• Being rude to him in front of others
• Dismissing her needs as unimportant

How can you tell if these or other things have caused your child's heart to close? It can be difficult to discern a closed heart because the typical manifestations are usually present to some degree during normal adolescence—things like lengthy periods of silence, avoiding eye contact, and resisting touch. When a teenager's attitude or behavior changes drastically and seemingly overnight, however, or he begins to display some of the more rebellious kinds of actions, you need to look carefully for a closed heart. Here are the most common signs of a closed heart:

• Your teen develops an argumentative attitude.
• Your teen seeks friends who are the opposite of the kind you desire for him or her.
• Your teen swears or uses disrespectful language.
• Your teen's facial expressions begin to reflect anger or avoidance.
• Your teen is resistant to discussing or agreeing on almost anything.
• When touching your teen's hand, it's often cold and unresponsive.
• You sense your teen is avoiding you.
• Your teen often turns away in your presence.
• Your teen shows a lack of respect for your advice.
• Your teen becomes highly critical of you.
• Warm feelings that used to exist between you and your teen seem to have disappeared.
• Your teen begins to indulge in sex, alcohol, or drugs.

The simplest explanation of why a teenager's heart closes: Lies written on their hearts. Things can be written on our hearts. The Scriptures are very clear about that:

• Keep my commands and you will live; guard my teachings as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart. (Prov. 7:2-3)
• Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. (Prov. 3:3)
• "Judah's sin is engraved with an iron tool, inscribed with a flint point, on the tablets of their hearts and on the horns of their altars. (Jer. 17:1)

Throughout our sons and daughters life, their hearts have learned many things. Some of what they've learned is true; much of it is not. Think about all of the negative things that you learned about you as you were growing up. Think about your parents, siblings, teachers, friends, schoolmates, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, neighborhood bullies, etc. Can you hear them? You're lazy; stupid, ugly, bad, not good enough, short, fat, skinny, dorky, ridiculous, irritating, goofy, irresponsible, and so on. All sorts of damage has been done to your heart and to the hearts of our children over the years. All sorts of terrible things taken in—by those who should have known better, and by our Enemy, who seeks to steal and kill and destroy. When we hear these things said to us, this creates a massive wound in our heart.

This is exactly what happened to King David when he was a teenager. David's oldest brother said, "Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the desert? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is" (1 Sam 17:28). On that day, David learned that he was conceited and that he had a wicked heart. Lies! Greg's son Garrison's favorite movie is about an ogre named Shrek. In the movie there is one scene where Shrek is talking to his sidekick, Donkey, about why we don't like to be around people: "I don't have a problem with people. It's people who seem to have a problem with me. They take one look at me and yell, 'stupid, ugly ogre'." Our teenagers have experienced the same thing as King David and Shrek—our hearts are under attack.

What's interesting is that somehow we've overlooked the fact that our heart can be broken and has been broken. For he never thought of doing a kindness, but hounded to death the poor and the needy and the brokenhearted (Ps 109:16). And when a heart is broken, we are left helpless. Scorn has broken my heart and has left me helpless; I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found none (Ps 69:20). This is why a heart closes—because it's been broken. But the great news is that Christ came to heal the brokenhearted. The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, (Isaiah 61:1). It is like Christ is saying, "Your heart is now in many pieces. I want to heal it." For He says this throughout the Scriptures:

• For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them' ( Matt 13:15).
• The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. (Ps 34:18)
• He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (Ps 147:3)

If we want our heart healed, all we have to do is to ask Christ. We need to understand His truth and His truth about us and our heart. And He's already equipped us to go on that journey. Jesus has given us His Spirit (the Holy Spirit) as Counselor so that we can know in our hearts what the truth is about us. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you (John 14:16-17). When God reveals the truth about you, and you believe that truth, it will set you free. Ask for God to reveal his truth about you: Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32). I want to know and believe the truth about me—God's truth—not the lies I've bought in to over the years—the ones written on my heart. Knowing the truth does not mean knowing cognitively—in your mind. You must know down deep in your heart. This is when the truth begins to set us free, just as the rain must soak the earth down to the roots in order for your garden to grow.

You have an opportunity to "free" your heart from the lies you've bought into. And, you have the same opportunity to help your son or daughter experience the same freedom. If your teen will allow it, ask them these three questions:

1. What has life taught you about your heart?
2. What messages have you learned about you while growing up?
3. What have you believed about your heart over the years?

Encourage them to seek the Lord's truth about them. Encourage them to set their hearts free.

Our purpose in writing about a closed heart is not to make parents feel guilty. Rather, we want to provide hope. We have closed the hearts of our own wives and children many times. But it's possible to reopen an angry, closed heart, and next we'll show you how. We have found four essential steps in the process of doing it.

1. Reflect Tenderness.

When we realize a teen's heart is closed, the first step in opening it is to express a softness, or tenderness. To reflect tenderness to your teen, we want you to …

• lower your voice
• become gentle in heart
• get down on bended knee
• speak slowly
• relax your facial expressions
• become pleasant in your demeanor

All of these reflect honor and humility, and as the Bible suggests, "A gentle answer turns away wrath." When we become tender, we communicate four important things. We're saying:

A. The teen is valuable and important. We express this in nonverbal ways: We're slow to move toward him. Our heads may be bowed, and we're obviously grieved that we have hurt him.
B. We don't want to see her heart closed. We care about her.
C. We know something's wrong. We acknowledge by our softness that an offense has taken place, and we're going to slow down long enough to correct whatever has happened.
D. We're open to listening. It's safe for him to say how he feels about what has happened, and we're not going to get angry or hurt him again.

Once we become soft, the next step is to better understand our teen's pain.

2. Increase our own understanding.

It's important to genuinely understand the pain a teenager feels and how she has interpreted our offensive behavior. We must ask for her perspective on what occurred so we can validate her feelings or needs. Taking the time to see someone as unique and very valuable is true friendship. We must resist the urge to defend ourselves, lecture, or question why she did or didn't do something.

Instead, it is important to empathize with our teens. Empathy is identifying with and understanding the other person's situation, feelings, and motives. Empathy is easy to give. You start by taking a guess at what your son or daughter may be feeling.

Listening and empathizing communicates that you believe your child has something valuable to say; consequently, she feels valuable. Listening shows that you respect her as a person; empathy communicates that you understand her. Listen to understand rather than to respond; desire to understand more than to defend yourself. In other words, listen with your heart—hear her pain and feel her needs.

When we're really listening, we don't need to tell anybody—it's evident. You can bet our teens know whether we're truly listening or faking it. We show we're listening by our body language, by nonverbal responses like facial expressions and eye contact, and by the follow-up questions we ask. Furthermore, we give cues that demonstrate we're paying attention. A good listener:

• is attentive, not distracted; does not look around or do something else at the same time
• does not rush the speaker
• is focused on the person speaking
• does not interrupt
• maintains good eye contact
• does not grunt responses

When we're really listening and empathizing, our attention is focused squarely on the other person. He will, therefore, feel like the most important person in our world at that moment. Listening does not require attempts at problem solving. Our teenagers merely want to know that we understand their point of view. They want to sense from us that it's okay to be upset and to show emotion.

Good listening takes time and work, which is why so few people practice it, much less master it. But know this: If our teens don't feel they're being heard, it's unlikely that our relationships with them will improve.

As a rule, to the same degree that they feel listened to, they will grant future opportunities for communication. After all, who wants to talk with someone who doesn't listen? For that matter, who wants to be in a relationship with someone who doesn't listen? To help you become a better listener, we will explore in the next chapter a communication method so powerful that it instantly allows you to completely hear and understand your son or daughter.

Now that we're becoming soft and tender, and we're listening and empathizing to understand our teenager's pain, the third step in opening a closed heart is to admit our mistakes.

3. Admit the offense.

When someone who hurts us does not take responsibility for his actions, it can be discouraging. Perhaps your teenager feels like one of the monkeys at an unusual zoo. "That's incredible, having a monkey and a lion together in the same cage," said a zoo visitor. "How do they get along?"

"Pretty well, for the most part," answered the zookeeper. "But once in a while they have a disagreement, and then we have to get a new monkey."

Our teenagers may feel that each time they get into a disagreement with us, we come down on them like a strong lion. They may feel that their hearts have been "killed" like one of those monkeys—that we, instead of tending to their wounds by admitting our wrongdoing, have simply rejected their feelings as invalid. As a parent, it can be hard to say "I was wrong," but it can work wonders.

Admitting we're wrong (when we obviously are) is like tending to our teenagers' wounds. Or, to change the analogy, it's like drilling a hole in their "anger bucket" and allowing that unhealthy emotion to drain away. Once they sense that we understand our mistake and they hear us admit it, the anger has a way of escaping from their lives.

Sometimes we may not be wrong about the facts or issues of a matter, but our attitude might be. Or perhaps the way we've done something is offensive. If our attitude is harsh and angry when telling our teens about legitimate problems, we're still wrong. The Bible affirms this: "The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God." Stopping short of admitting we're wrong can leave a dangerous gap between us and our teens that may not mend quickly—or at all.

When parents don't admit their mistakes, they can delay the reopening of their teens' hearts indefinitely. On the other hand, teens feel valuable when they hear us admit our mistakes and see that we understand how they feel. Sometimes that's all it takes to open a closed heart.

The last step in opening a teenager's closed heart is one of the most honoring things we can do for someone. It's like giving a large bottle of cold water to someone dying of thirst in the desert.

4. Seek forgiveness.

The final part of opening a closed heart is to seek forgiveness for whatever offense we've committed. If we don't do this, our teenagers will be left feeling violated and still angry, just like the man who discovered a gigantic dent in the back of his new car one morning. By the look of things, the damage would cost him thousands of dollars to repair. He was relieved, however, to find a note under the windshield wiper from the guilty party—until he actually read the note: "As I am writing this, your neighbors are watching me. They think I am giving you my name, address, license number, and insurance company. I'm not!"

It's important to give teenagers the opportunity to respond to our confession—to ask if they can find it in their hearts to forgive us. This is a wonderful opportunity to model seeking forgiveness. Our children need to see the importance of asking someone to forgive us when we make a mistake. Most young people are aware that the Bible says we're to seek forgiveness when we hurt someone. But unless they see us valuing it by doing it ourselves, they're not likely to ask forgiveness either.

When Bill was about 17, his father, Jerry, got a speeding ticket while in Florida on a business trip. Jerry decided to keep his mistake a secret. He had always taken great pride, after all, in his flawless driving record. He even went to great lengths to remind his family of it. Whenever a family member received a traffic ticket, Jerry was the first to give the "lawbreaker" a hard time.

Jerry's secret was safe until the state of Florida sent him a letter requesting his attendance at driving school. By mistake, Bill opened the letter and discovered his dad's misfortune. "Kelly, you'll never guess what I found!" Bill told his sister. "Dad was caught doing 75 on an on-ramp in Florida. Mr. 'I've never received a single speeding ticket' has to attend driving school!" The two laughed and couldn't wait until their dad got home.

When their parents walked through the door together that evening, Bill and Kelly asked them both to sit down. "Mom," the two stated while trying to remain serious, "we suspect that Dad has been hiding something from us."

"Dad," they questioned while holding up the letter, "do you have any idea why the state of Florida would be requesting your presence at driving school? Have you experienced any problems—no, make that 'delays'—while getting on the freeway?"

Jerry turned red as he realized he'd been caught.

"You should know you can't keep things from us," his children said while laughing. "We're very disappointed in you, young man."

The entire family had fun watching Jerry squirm. Much to their surprise, however, he didn't become defensive. Instead, he got down on his knees and made a remarkable statement: "I'm sorry for trying to deceive you guys about the ticket. Could you forgive me?"

His teenagers were taken aback. Is Dad really apologizing for this? they thought. It had been a long time since they had heard him seek forgiveness. He truly touched their lives with a valuable lesson.

For Christmas that year, one of Jerry's children gave him a special award in honor of his remarkable attitude, one that still sits on his desk. It's a small plaque that reads: "OUTSTANDING COMMITMENT TO CONTINUING DRIVER'S EDUCATION. THANKS FOR BEING A MAN, DAD!"

We strongly encourage you to begin modeling the seeking of forgiveness to your teenagers. It will encourage and inspire them, and most of the time it will open their closed hearts.

The DNA of Parent-Teen Relationships

© Copyright 2005 Smalley Relationship Center

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